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Public-records lawsuit settled
(Santa Fe New Mexican, The Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Oct. 11--The state Department of Taxation and Revenue has settled a two-year-old public-records case and agreed to pay $117,500 to a private investigator who sued the department for access to the records.
A lawyer for the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government said the settlement amount was the largest ever made in such a case.
The case centers on requests by Albuquerque investigator Eric Griego for access to information managed by the department's Delinquent Property Tax Bureau, including deeds and liens.
Griego in April 2006 sued the state, saying the department in 2002 had started delaying or ignoring his requests for information relating to properties with delinquent taxes. In 2005, he says, the department began denying his requests for information -- the same information he had been obtaining since the early 1980s.
The department maintained the documents were not public; Griego, the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government and state District Judge Valerie Huling all said they were. Huling last fall ruled the records are public.
Griego said he "for the most part" got the records to which he was entitled.
Griego uses the information to recover money from the sale of properties with delinquent taxes seized by the state for the heirs of former owners, for example, who are entitled to the difference between the delinquent tax amount and the amount the property sold for.
In a statement Friday, Griego said he hopes his case can be a lesson to state government. "Obviously I'm pleased with Taxation and Revenue's decision to settle this lawsuit on the side of openness and transparency in government. It's unfortunate, however, that it took nearly three years for the department to come to the conclusion that these are in fact public records," he said.
"A lot of time, taxpayer money and court resources could have been saved had the department chosen instead to provide me with the records as they had been doing since the early 1980s. Especially considering that the entire lawsuit was over something as simple as deeds and mortgages," Griego said.
"I was always confident that I would prevail in this action and was extremely pleased that the court ruled in my favor over a year ago. I hope that the Department and other government agencies have learned that they need to adopt policies that favor easy and open access to records."
Taxation and Revenue Department Secretary Rick Homans said in a statement that it was time to move on. "It was important to resolve this case, both for the department and for Mr. Griego. Considering the facts around this dispute, we feel that this settlement is fair to all of the parties. The department had, from the outset, sought direction from the courts to clarify the law in regards to public records and taxpayer confidentiality. With that accomplished, it's time for all parties to move on."
As part of the settlement, the department admits no wrongdoing, and the lawsuit is dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. Also, Griego will provide the department with a "full and unconditional" release of any other claims.
The settlement amount is the largest in a public-records case in New Mexico, said Pat Rogers, an attorney who represented the Foundation for Open Government.
Although the Taxation and Revenue Department said in a statement that it planned to drop its appeal of the court's ruling ordering it to pay $25,970 in attorneys fees to the foundation, Rogers said that as of Friday evening, he hadn't heard from the state and couldn't comment.
Rogers in the past has said the department was blatant about ignoring the law when it came to Griego's requests for documents.
According to court documents, the department in at least five cases didn't respond to Griego's record requests. State law requires custodians of public documents to reply to a request for information within three days and, in most cases, to provide the information within 15 days. In one instance, Griego filed a request in July 2002 and didn't get a denial until December 2005, court documents show.
As part of the case, Griego had asked for $64,241 in attorney's fees. He also sought between $975,000 and $1.2 million in damages for the withheld records.
The lawsuit also in part prompted a review of the state's policy related to people who locate owners of unclaimed property held by the state. One part of Griego's lawsuit claimed the department was improperly putting limits on the number of records related to unclaimed property he could request at one time.
Homans in July said the department will now enforce a policy requiring "finders" to wait 48 months from the time the department gets control of the property to start working claims.
Contact Kate Nash at 986-3036 or knash@sfnewmexican.com. Read her blog, Green Chile Chatter, at www.santafenewmexican.com.
To see more of The Santa Fe New Mexican, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.santafenewmexican.com/.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Santa Fe New Mexican
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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